The List of 209 Tribune Company Managers Who Made Bank

We will spare you a quip about making lists and checking them twice. Naughty execs? Not news. Naughty Tribune execs ditto. Seeing the list of who made what while hardworking scribes – including a dude who lost his eye covering the Iraq War for the LAT – were laid off, bought out or downgraded – very nice. Knowing all those people on the list may have to give the money back – even better.

All told, the Tribune Company payments came to about $180 million. That’s a serious piece of change — especially to someone who worked there for years and didn’t share in a penny of it; and most definitely to someone whose humble role in the privatization process was to get laid off.

Here’s the PDF I was forwarded — it shows what everyone got. A few high-fliers, as the expression goes, made out like bandits. For instance David Hiller, CEO of the Los Angeles Times before he left the company in July of 2008, got $3,972,558 in a deferred bonus, $2,328,067 for his stock, $2,083,333 in phantom equity, a total of $3,050,523 in excise tax gross ups, and $3,960,000 in executive transition. That comes to nearly $15.4 million. Then again, it’s a trifle compared to what Dennis FitzSimons, CEO of the entire company, walked away with — $28.7 million.